Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Show And Tell - Stealing Mel's idea

Today, Mel is showing paint samples. Five years ago, at this time of year, paint samples were a large part of my life, and led to a most interesting Easter weekend...

My husband built our house. He was the general contractor, sure, but he also helped with the framing. He and I installed insulation and wiring. He supervised the drywall hanging. Then we hired someone to do the drywall finishing (mud and tape) and painting.

In case you haven't ever dealt with this sector of the population, it's difficult to find a reliable subcontractor. Our drywall finisher and his son did the mudding and taping, and applied the finish to the ceiling. They started painting - complaining the whole time that I had chosen semi-gloss. You know why contractors choose flat paint? Aside from the fact that it's cheap, it's also very forgiving, so if the drywall finish isn't perfect, it's not so noticeable. The more gloss you add, the more the imperfections stand out. For a couple days, the painting was going on. The ceilings were finished, and the Friday before Easter, we made a rookie mistake. Since the job was just about finished, we paid out the remainder of the contract.

The check got cashed shortly before we went to the house to see it. I had chosen what I thought was a soft oatmeal color - neutral and light/bright - for most of the house. For the bathrooms, I chose a dark sage type color. For the dining room, I wanted a dark red.

What I got in the house, instead of a neutral tone with a dark red accent, was a carnival funhouse. The oatmeal color turned out to be a pale yellow - pleasant, but not exactly right for the whole house. The painter had only applied two coats of the red (one of which was mixed with primer), so it was a lovely hot pink. The greenish color in the bathrooms was OK on it's own, but combined with the other colors...it just wasn't pretty. My husband freaked out. I cried. The painter had vanished with our money, and we got a pretty accurate gut feeling that he wasn't coming back - it was a holiday weekend, and he had just gotten paid.

So off we went to the Home Depot, where we tried to pick another color. We had to repaint, because it needed to be finished and dried before the next weekend. That's when the guys were coming to install the crown molding. I wanted a beige color, but thought it would be too dark. The nice lady at Home Depot finally told us how to get an accurate idea of what the color would look like on the walls. I don't know why this works, but it does...

Take a sample of pure white and cut a square right in the middle. Put the color you think you like in the middle of the square. It will give it a much different tone, and allow you to get a better idea of the color than just the paint sample itself. If you want an accent color, put your main color and the accent side by side in the cut-out square.

So, my husband and I painted for an entire weekend. We put 2 coats of beige on the main room, kitchen and master bedroom. We put about 6-8 coats of red on the dining room. It turned out very nicely. If my DVD drive worked, I would post some pictures of the colors.

Lessons learned: Never pick colors that are too light. Never pay anyone until you are satisfied with the finished project. Never let me choose the colors.

Thanks for the tips! I had a friend who had 1 red wall in her bathroom. It was stunning so I commented. Her husband rolled his eyes and said the reason there was only 1 red wall was because of the number of coats he had to apply to get it that shade. Whenever I see a red wall I wonder if the owner loathed the experience as much as he did. Sorry they ran off with the cash after a crappy job.

Sucks you paid for crap work! But I totally get the coat after coat thing. We did a Blue wall in our apartment living room and it took forever to get right, and then when we needed to paint it white to move out it was worse!

Three walls in the "formal living room" and the top half all the walls in the dining room are a color that I refer to as "plastic baby flesh". Yeah, on the walls it didn't turn out to be the same as it looked on the card. And the man painted while I was away. Those were big rooms and we decided not to redo it. People always give me the side eye about the color. ;p

Oh god thank you. We have spent the last few weeks painting our new house and are having the worst time with paint colors! We have been getting tiny sample sizes of the paint and then slapping it on a wall to see if it works, the living room at one time had three streaks of blue in it until I made up my mind. Right now the master bedroom has a patch of coffee bean brown that will stay there until my husband and come to an agreement about the color. Oh how I have come to hate painting!

We have to paint alot in our house. We haven't started a thing yet, but I think we will try to do ourselves when we are ready. Never mind contractors there, can you imagine what we deal with here in Cairo? Well if you can't just imagine bad contractors times 1,000, it sucks. Not everyone of course, but many!

Given the fact that we paint some room in our house at least once or twice a year, thanks for the tip. We usually do pretty well with zoning in on the color that we want while we're still in the store, but we'll take any tip that will make our selection process easier.

(and how jealous am I that your hubby is a GC? Painting is about all that we're able to do on our own when it comes to house stuff)